Enlightenment in a cup

Enlightenment cannot be obtained
at Starbucks,
no matter what the sign says.
You can't order up
a Grande Mind
with a double shot
of equanimity
to sip
while you sit
and scroll through
the Dalai Lama's Twitter feed
and expect
to attain nirvana.

You could, perhaps,
become enlightened
by drinking tea,
any old tea,
with perfect presence,
feeling the temperature of the cup,
noting the sensation --
pleasantly warm. scorching. or neither.
Smell the aroma
and observe your mind.
Is there a memory?

Anticipation?
A plan? A leap ahead to what comes after tea?
Lift the cup, and feel the muscles
in your hand, arm, and shoulder --
the interdependence of bone, ligament, muscle --
adjust to the weight,
move the cup toward your lips,
and taste.

And let the next sip
be new,
free from expectation,
fresh.

You can eat Enlightened ice cream
without becoming enlightened.

Or you can you can touch
your enlightened nature
while eating ice cream.
Fresh. Clear. Open to the experience.
Even the headache.
If you're enlightened
you wouldn't suffer from it,
just note the sensation
and let it pass.

How to act Like an Enlightened Being

This is Part 2 of a talk given at Unitarian Universalist Society: East on May 26.

Buddhist teacher Noah Levine says that everyone has buddhanature – but few chose to do the work to awaken.  And it is work. We have those glimpses of our enlightened nature all the time, but we don’t live from there.

Much of Buddhist practice – from the simplicity of zazen, or Zen Buddhist meditation, to the elaborate bells and drums and thangka paintings used by Tibetan Buddhists – is designed to help us get in touch with our awakened nature for longer stretches of time and to develop familiarity with that feeling – to “bake it into the bones,” as one of my teachers says – so that it becomes our default setting and we go there more easily during our ordinary lives.

I want to focus on the Paramitas, or the Six Perfections. “Paramita” literally means to cross over. These are the actions of awakened beings – they’re also the actions of unawakened beings. The difference is in the intention. I see them as ways to put our Unitarian-Universalist principles into action.

The first is generosity. Nothing new there. Each week we share our gifts during the offering in terms of treasure, and we share our time by being here and our talents in our interactions. Generosity as practiced on the road to enlightenment is a practice of selflessness; we give without reservation or judgment, without wondering whether it’s enough or whether the person sitting next to you saw how much you put in – or whether you put anything in.

“Transcendent generosity is simply a willingness to be open and do whatever is

necessary in the moment, without any philosophical or religious rationale,” writes Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche in his book “Rebel Buddha.” In monetary terms, you give what you can afford and what is appropriate. But you also give reassurance, praise where due, a smile. It’s a generosity of spirit, more than anything.

I see this as connected to our principles of recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of all beings, and in promoting justice, equity, and compassion. When we are willing to be with someone simply because we are both human beings, when we give what is needed without regard to how it makes us look or what the reaction will be, when we give because we see that all beings – ourselves and others – share the same nature, we are putting those principles into practice.

The second paramita is discipline. The practice of discipline as a transcendent action is to “maintain a sense of mindfulness and awareness of your actions and the affect of those actions on others,” Ponlop Rinpoche says. He speaks specifically of discipline in

terms of anger – of recognizing when anger is arising in you and stopping before you splatter your anger onto others. In the Vajrayana Buddhist teachings, anger is related to wisdom, so that if you can recognize anger arising, you can see what the wisdom is – an injustice, an insult – and see the wise response that moves the situation toward connection rather than separation.

This connects to the right of conscience and the democratic process. We’ve all seen anger play out in the democratic process in recent years in ways that many of us have found disturbing. Yet that anger is revealing – it’s a fireworks display of internal fears and doubts. If we can be mindful of what we say and how we say it, we can have civilized discourse that allows difference.

The third is patience. Patience, in this light, is not forbearance or endurance. It’s connected with discipline and with the practice of responding rather than reacting. When you react, it’s habitual – you’ve acted that way before. When you respond, you’re in touch with what’s in front of you and acting from that.

Instead of reacting impulsively, Ponlop Rinpoche says, you become curious about the situation. If someone is upset at you, you connect with their emotion – pain, frustration, disappointment -- rather than feeling attacked. “It’s a voice of concern for the pain that is touching you and others equally and the thought of how to relieve it,” he says. 

Again, this practice extends to yourself. When you’re frustrated with your progress, you rely on the practice of patience to stay with the feelings and let the emotion settle so that you can get a clear view of what’s happening. Is something really not working – or are you angry or hurt because you’re not getting instant results? Patience helps you return to balance, brings you back from getting lost in a thicket of emotions or

intellectual thought. In that way, it’s connected to the free and responsible search for truth and to acceptance and encouragement in spiritual growth. Patience says, keep searching. The path is made by walking.

Next is diligence. We may think of diligence as connected with keeping our noses to the grindstone, but Buddhism connects it with delight. It does not mean that we spend all of our time in esoteric practices but that we make all of life our practice. “Diligence is energy, the power that keeps makes everything happen. It’s like the wind, a driving force that keeps us moving along the path. Where does this energy come from? It comes from the enjoyment and satisfaction we experience as we get further into the path.”

This is connected with all the principles as it is with all of life. Do we see the inherent worth and dignity of every being we meet? Do we encourage others to search for truth even if we think we know the answer? Do we support democracy even when we lose?

The fifth paramita is meditation. In Buddhism this is related to specific practices. For

non-Buddhists, though, it means making time for whatever feeds you spiritually, whatever makes you feel whole. If that’s being in nature, make time to do that. If it’s music, carve out time for that. Same for reading, dance, being with others, art, Suduko … only you know what takes you out of your mundane mind and social roles. Do it. In Buddhism, busyness is seen as a form of laziness – you use activity to avoid being with yourself. Setting aside time for what rejuvenates you is as important as attending a committee meeting.

Finally, the last paramita is wisdom or knowledge. This connects with respect for the interdependent web of all existence because that’s the wisdom at work here. Everything is interconnected. That’s what we’ve learned from diligently and consistently working with generosity and patience and mindfulness, from seeing that all of our actions have consequences for ourselves and others. It is a gnosis, a knowing that is beyond words.

Jack Kornfield says that we exist in an interconnected web of “wholeness amidst a sea of Buddhas, visible whenever we open the eyes of love and wisdom.”

He writes:

Years ago, Ram Dass went to his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, to ask, “How can I best be enlightened?” His guru answered, “Love people.” When he asked about the most direct path to awakening, his guru answered, “Feed people. Love people and feed people. Serve the divine in every form.” …

Service is the expression of the awakened heart. But whom are we serving? It is ourselves. When someone asked Ghandi how he could so continually sacrifice himself for India, he replied, “I do this for myself alone.” When we serve others, we serve ourselves. The Upanishads call this “God feeding God.”

It’s the same if you say buddhas feeding buddhas. Or humans feeding humans. Our enlightenment happens when we see that all beings are enlightened, in their nature if not their actions, and we meet their enlightened nature with our own.

What is enlightenment?

This is Part I of a talk I gave at the Unitarian Universalist Society: East on May 26.

You know how it’s said that the Native People in the northern climates – in my childhood we called them Eskimos – have 50 words for snow?  It’s very important to them to know the condition of the snow to make their plans for the day or the month, so they developed lots of descriptive words to note subtle differences.

For Buddhists, the word “enlightenment” is kind of like that. Enlightenment is the promise of the Buddhist path, and it has many synonyms – grace, basic goodness, awakening, buddhanature, ground of being, original mind. The Buddha didn’t call himself enlightened.

This is the account given by religious historian Huston Smith in his book “Buddhism:”

Buddhism begins with a man. In his later years, when India was afire with his message and kings themselves were bowing before him, people came to him … asking what he was. “Are you a god?” they asked. “No.” “Are you an angel?” “No.” “A saint?” “No.” “Then what are you?”

Buddha answered, “I am awake.”

His answer became his title, for this is what Buddha means. The Sanskrit root “budh” denotes both to wake up and to know. Buddha, then, means “The Enlightened One” or the “Awakened One.” While the rest of the world was wrapped in the womb of sleep, dreaming a dream known as the waking state of human life, one of their number roused himself. Buddhism begins with a man who shook off the daze, the doze, the dreamlike vagaries of ordinary awareness. It begins with a man who woke up.

Let me ask you, did you wake up this morning? Obviously, because you’re here, sitting upright. 

Now let me ask this: Are you enlightened?

 Yeah, you are. 

“Nobody believes his or her life is perfect,” says Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck. “And yet there is something within each of us that basically knows we are boundless, limitless.”

Buddhism begins with a man. Not quite an ordinary man. A rather well-off man. But just a man – no divine parents, no divine interventions.  His parents, like all good parents, tried to shield him from the disturbing things in the world; they kept him on the grounds of their home, controlling the environment as much as possible. But one day he snuck out, with the help of one of his servants, and he saw sickness, old age, and death for the first time. He was disturbed by it and wanted to understand it. So he left his parents’ home and became a spiritual seeker. 

According to Joseph Campbell, the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment fits into the archetype of the hero myth – like Odysseus or Luke Skywalker. After an awakening to the conditions of the world he renounces the comforts of his princely home. He struggles to find answers in various spiritual disciplines, then sits down under a tree and vows to stay there until it all makes sense. In the fourth and final stage of the archetypal journey, he wakes up and sees the interconnectedness of all existence. 

And that’s where many hero myths end -- although Disney now plans to continue the Star Wars saga beyond Episode 6, which was originally Episode 3 before the prequels. Perhaps Buddhism today is the equivalent of Episode 2563, in which subsequent beings continue to aspire to the same realizations the Buddha had that night and still use his map to attain enlightenment in a world that seems to have little in common with the one he lived in.

It is said that the Buddha was reluctant to try to teach what he had discovered because it is experiential, not something easily reduced to words. He was asked to survey the world with his eye of wisdom and see that there were many beings who could benefit from his teachings. Out of deep compassion for their suffering, the Buddha went on to teach for 45 years before dying after eating a piece of bad meat.

 There are numerous versions of this story from different traditions, some very simple, some very elaborate. Most likely, none of them are precisely factual.

Here’s what is important:

Buddhism begins with a man. A human. And it ends with a human – who dies a human death. The Buddha set the example for his followers – upon attaining enlightenment, he stayed in this world and lived in this world – the same world -- in the same body with no super powers except the ability to see what is real.

For Buddhists, that hasn’t changed. Enlightenment isn’t a free pass to a new realm where all pain and suffering stops. It’s simply a new way to live in the world that we’re already in. And not only do we live in the same world, but we are the same people. For what the Buddha discovered when he became enlightened – in what Campbell calls 
the "Great Awakening" stage of the hero myth -- is the same realization the Dorothy, the archetypal heroine of "The Wizard of Oz," found at the end of her journey:  Everything she wanted, everything she had battled so hard to get, was right here -- picture Judy Garland in her blue gingham jumper touching her heart as she gazes into Auntie Em;s eyes -- it was right here, all along.

And it is in you.

Roshi JoanSutherland writes in Buddhadharma magazine:

Enlightenment is our true nature and our home, but the complexities of human life cause us to forget. That forgetting feels like exile, and we make elaborate structures of habit, conviction, and strategy to defend against its desolation. But this condition isn’t hopeless; it’s possible to dismantle those structures so we can return from an exile that was always illusory to a home that was always right under our feet.

Enlightenment is our true nature … but let me ask, do you feel enlightened right now? Have you had the feeling of being enlightened – of being awake, let’s say. I bet you have. In fact, I’m sure you have.

People go away for things called “enlightenment intensives,” where they engage in activities that are meant to put them in touch with their enlightened nature. You can spend thousands of dollars for a few days in a tent in the desert with a guru who guarantees you enlightenment. You can. But you don’t have to. Enlightenment is much more ordinary than that. It’s always with us – we’re constantly flickering in and out of contact with it. It gets obscured by concepts and constructs, social conventions and cultural conditioning that are like soap scum and fog on a mirror, blocking us from a clear view.

ChogyamTrungpa Rinpoche describes it as a state in which body and mind are synchronized. It’s the fusion of awareness and what it is aware of, the obliteration of the boundaries between perception, perceiver, and perceived.

Toni Packer describes it like this:

Awareness cannot be taught, and when it is present it has no context. All contexts are created by thought and are therefore corruptible by thought. Awareness simply throws light on what is, without any separation whatsoever.

Now, let’s meditate.